Blood exosomal micro ribonucleic acid profiling reveals the complexity of hepatocellular carcinoma and identifies potential biomarkers for differential diagnosis

Figure 1 Blood exosomal microRNA profiling in hepatocellular carcinoma patients and non-hepatocellular carcinoma patients. The top 5 principal components of blood exosomal micro RNA profiles from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients and non-HCC patients are shown. The red represents HCC patients, and the green represents non-HCC patients. HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma.

Figure 2 Daily alcohol consumption alters the blood exosomal microribonucleic acid profiles of hepatitis B virus positive non-hepatocellular carcinoma patients. A: Distribution of daily alcohol drinkers and non-daily alcohol drinkers on principal components 1 (PC1) and PC2; B: Distribution of PC1 weight and PC2 weight of each microRNA; C and D: Expression level comparisons of miR-3168 (C) and miR-223-3p (D) from daily alcohol drinkers and non-daily alcohol drinkers between hepatocellular carcinoma patients and non-hepatocellular carcinoma patients are demonstrated. HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma.

Figure 3 Blood exosomal micro ribonucleic acid profiles reveal the stage of tumor tissues. A: Distribution of hepatocellular carcinoma patients with stage A, stage B, and stage C on principal components 1 (PC1) and PC2. The yellow represents the patients with stage A, the blue represents the patients with stage B, and the red represents the patients with stage C; B: Histogram displaying PC1 scores of patients with stage A, stage B, and stage C. The histogram color is labeled as in A; C: Distribution of PC1 weight and PC2 weight of each micro ribonucleic acid. The colorindicates the hazardous levels based on The Cancer Genome Atlas data; D: Kaplan–Meier analysis of overall survival of two groups (high expression and low expression of miR-455-5p); E: Kaplan–Meier analysis of overall survival of the two groups (high expression and low expression of miR-30c-5p).

Figure 4 Accuracy of biomarkers from blood exosomal micro ribonucleic acid to classify hepatocellular carcinoma and non-hepatocellular carcinoma patients is affected by tumor stage and alcohol consumption habits. A: The area under the curve of paired exosomal micro ribonucleic acid in cohort 1 and cohort 2; B: Distribution of the two paired blood exosomal miRNAs (miR-628-3p/miR-941 and miR-584-5p/miR-106-3p) colored according to tumor stage; and C: Alcohol consumption habits. HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma.